Early Easter

This year Brian and I decided to start a new tradition of having the Easter Bunny visit our house the Saturday before Easter, instead of on Easter. That way we can enjoy the baskets and egg hunt without having to worry about working it around getting to church, and it helps to have the sugar rush on Saturday instead of right in the middle of sacrament meeting, and the biggest thing is that we can do the "fun" stuff early and focus on the Savior on Easter.

We had the Simms and a couple of neighbor boys over for dinner last night. Alyssa invited the neighbor boys over. When we were trying to send them home so we could eat, Alyssa came to me and said, "But I told them to ask their mom if they could eat with us." Okay. It was a lot of fun, and it was helpful to have the neighbors with us, becasue they became good friends with the Simms son, Justin, who was worried that he wouldn't have any fun since he would be the oldest kid there. Brian won Settlers of Catan, like he always does, and it was really late when we put the kids to bed. Brian and I were both really tired, so we didn't do anything to set up Easter before we went to bed.

But when the kids sleep in, the cat usually wakes me up, so when she started licking my hand and wanting me to fill her water bowl, I went downstairs to put the baskets together. Brian was in charge of keeping the kids upstairs if they woke up, because I was worried that it might ruin the mystery of the Easter Bunny for Alyssa if Brian was keeping everyone upstairs and then all of a sudden I come up and announce that the Easter Bunny had come "some time during the night." She's getting smarter, and it won't be long before she'll figure things like that out. So the whole time that I was dumping jelly beans into the plastic eggs, and filling cake decorating bags with Cheetos, I kept praying that the kids would sleep long enough for me to set the baskets out and hide the eggs. But when I finished everything and went back to bed, the kids stayed sleeping for a while longer.

"Why won't they wake up?" I kept asking Brian.

"Because you want them to," he would say.

Eventually we ended up with everyone in bed with us, and when we were headed down for "breakfast" Ethan was the first one to bounce down the stairs. He came back up with a large purple egg in his hand and said, "An Over Egg, Mommy." And the hunt began.

I can not acurately say how wonderful it is to be a parent and watch the joy in your chldren's eyes when they're discovering the treasures in their easter baskets, and when thet're surprised at all the amazing places the Easter Bunny hid the eggs. I love having children; they're so much fun, and it's so amazing to live the magic of Holidays again through them.

So right now Marcus is sprinkling the milk from his sippy cup all over his tray of Cheetos, Ethan is buzzing a chocolate bee around the room, and Alyssa is giving us a play by play of all the wrong things Marcus is doing. We decided to let the kids have a candy breakfast, and then we'll have a healthy breakfast for lunch.

It's been a wonderful Easter so far, and we still have great things to come.